Fairfield Share the Weight; Open Class

Fairfield Share the Weight will have a meeting from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Saturday at SunnyBrook Assisted Living.

Volunteers for the nonprofit group sew weighted blankets that are given to children and adults with special needs.

All the materials needed to make the blankets are donated and supplied.

Sharing the Weight, based in Ottumwa, was organized by Marci Prose. She started the group when her son David was informally diagnosed with autism in 2013; he has since been officially diagnosed. While working with the Area Education Agency, David was given a weighted blanket to help him sleep. According to Prose, the first night, and nearly every night since, David has slept through the night — something that he had not done in his entire 2.5 years of life.

On David’s third birthday, Prose wanted to make three blankets to donate back to the AEA to express her family’s appreciation. For that first blanket-making party, enough material and weighted pellets were donated to make 12 blankets, so Prose’s plans evolved to make blankets until they ran out of donated supplies.

Now, a few years later, the group has seen hundreds of yards of fabrics and around 10,000 pounds of poly pellets — all donated by caring people and businesses — sewn into the special blankets by volunteers at blanket-making parties and distributed to those who need them.

Each weighted blanket is typically valued at a cost of $100 to $450.

Volunteers don’t have to be able to sew; there are tasks that non-sewers can do like taping outlines on the material so others can see where to sew and fill the blankets.

For information, call Joanne Ancell at 472-4736.

For information about Sharing the Weight, visit the website at www.sharingtheweight.org.

Open Class

The Open Class Division of the Greater Jefferson County Fair will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Jefferson County ISU Extension office.